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Why You Should Use Email Marketing To Promote Your Membership Website

The super power of marketing tools is still email marketing

Despite the focus these days on instagram, Pinterest and facebook message bots, email marketing is still a super powerful marketing tool, and one that most marketers still depend on after all these years. Let’s face it, almost every website you visit now has a popup or an inline optin form to sign up to the site owner’s email list. The truth is that if you are the right audience for that website, you will be interested to “Find Out More”, and getting on an email list is really a low-risk way to do it. It doesn’t cost anything and you can unsubscribe any time. No wonder website owners everywhere still use the method.

But what about using it to promote your membership website? Once people are paying your recurring income, why send them emails?

Here are our top 4 reasons why you should be using email marketing to promote your membership website:

1. It’s yours.

Once you have your email list, it’s yours. It’s not subject to the constantly changing algorithms of search engines and social media. If for some reason Facebook decided to shut down your account tomorrow, all your followers would be gone. But if you have an email list to fall back on, you’re good to go.

2. It’s personal.

Social media is great but it’s a forum. When you post a video or even show up live on your page or group, your followers may interact with you but it’s still somewhat of a ‘public’ experience. When you email someone, it’s a more personal experience…just you and the reader (at least from the readers’s point of view – and that’s what’s important!) With an email you have a chance to go in-depth into a topic that you know is important to your current and potential members. In spite of the popularity of long social media posts nowadays, an email just gives you more room to show your reader that you really ‘get’ their issues and potentially have the answers.

3. It’s branded.

The nurturing aspect of an email marketing campaign is a major component – it’s a great way to build a relationship with your potential and current members. Because you are communicating with them on a regular basis, they start to feel pretty quickly like they know you and your brand. Video is especially great for solidifying a relationship, even though you don’t actually know the person. They can see you, hear you, and really get a sense of what you are like and what you stand for. Even if you don’t use video, an email gives you a lot more room to display your brand colours, graphics and messaging than a social media post.

4. It’s targeted.

Finally, with the technology available in email marketing programs including segmentation, autoresponders, funnels and landing pages, you can tailor your messages to different parts of your list with almost granular precision. Let’s say you have a membership level with a free trial. If you use SubHub’s membership platform and MailChimp, whoever signs up to your free trial can be placed automatically on an email list just for free trialists.

Those who sign up to a paid program can be placed on another list. Your messaging to those who signed up for a free “taste” of your content will be different than your messaging to paying members. You can segment your list in all kinds of ways, including by products purchased, amount spent, date added to the list and more.

There you have 4 great reasons to use email marketing as part of your marketing mix when promoting your membership website. Check out a quick guide to the best ways to use email marketing to grow your subscriber list here.